


Ars Retrorsum

by aye



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:50:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aye/pseuds/aye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the third time this week, Seunghyun moves to shake him awake but finds himself stroking his hand over the curve of the boy's back instead. Thin, soft skin, the bones almost blue underneath, and his barcode, stark black and raised like a brand: G208K002.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ars Retrorsum

**Author's Note:**

> AU. Seunghyun, a failed musician; Jiyong, a clone. Comments, likes, kudos greatly appreciated.

Perennial night. The window reflects back his face, smeared, ghostly, drifting over the eight million buildings of Seoul's urban sprawl. Outside, a monstrous dragonfly carrier rumbles by, close enough for him to see the buzzing wings and the rows of anonymous passengers. The pilot's mirrored helmet tilts towards him for an instant before the aircraft groans and turns away.

Next to him, the boy turns over in his sleep, the sheets slipping from his shoulder. For the third time this week, Seunghyun moves to shake him awake but finds himself stroking his hand over the curve of the boy's back instead. Thin, soft skin, the bones almost blue underneath, and his barcode, stark black and raised like a brand: G208K002. 

He remembers what the boy had said: "I'm a clone," baldly, after Seunghyun had slammed him against the alley wall, "just so you know. But I'm the only one of my kind."

"Sure, kid, whatever," Seunghyun had said, and his hand had found its way into the boy's vinyl pants and slid against his cock and that shut the boy up, no more bravado, just a long gasping hiss. The boy's mouth had opened, seeking his, and he pressed their lips together hard, left them swollen and red, and all this to the rippling bass of the club. Sound all around, pressing in, vibrating through his bones, the nitrous from the club air still bubbling in his brain, tingling in his skin. His cock twitches at the memory, and he sits up. It's 5AM. Two hours until the factory shift begins.

Muffled noise beyond the window but inside, silence, save for the ticking of the clock. The heater clicks on, sputters lukewarm air, then clicks off, the air left cold and wanting. Seunghyun slips out of bed, shuffles to the bathroom. The water is cold, too, freezing as it spills out of the showerhead. Nothing works in this place, neither the heater nor the boiler, nor the sensors that lock his apartment when he leaves; but, then, there's nothing of value here anyway.

The boy is awake and shifting when Seunghyun emerges, pulling the sheets around himself in a cocoon. His hair is matted on one side.

"Why is it so cold?" the boy says, sleepily. Resting his head on his arms, knees folded up, he looks hungover but content, his eyes following Seunghyun across the room.

"Heater's broken." He picks out a jar of protein mash, spoons it into a pan.

"Come back to bed," the boy says.

“No breakfast?”

“Mmm.” Stretching out languorously, skin sliding over ribs; a fading bruise in the crook of his arm where Seunghyun had bitten him two nights ago, after pinning him to the grimy wall of the club. Another dragonfly rumbles past outside, cutting through the jumbled song and dance of the billboards. “Come to bed,” he says.

Thin arms link around Seunghyun’s neck, pull him down for a kiss — a soft, lazy one, tongues slowly melting together. A sigh, and the boy’s hips tilt upwards, grinding indulgently against him. Seunghyun slides one hand down, pushes in thumb and forefinger, parts.

The boy wraps his legs around Seunghyun’s waist and moans when he presses inside, pushes back, narrow hands braced against the wall. The muscles of his arms tighten and shift as Seunghyun fucks him, and with each thrust, a breathy sigh puffs out from between his lips. “Oh, fuck,” he gasps, and he grabs one of Seunghyun’s hands and wraps it around his cock, squeezing their fingers together. “Oh, God.”

Seunghyun flips him over onto all fours, feels the hard prick of nipples against his hand, the hot slickness beginning to leak across their interlaced fingers. Feels the boy tensing, coiling, the reverberation of moans vibrating between their bodies, him shuddering, moaning like song, like music, “I’m coming, I’m coming —.” His cock spurts hot and wet over Seunghyun’s fingers, body gripping him tightly as he thrusts in, in, in….

Sweat cools. The sheets are damp against his back and they cling as he reaches for a box of cigarettes. He takes one for himself, lights it, hands the pack over.

The boy stretches upwards, draping himself across Seunghyun’s chest to press the tips of their cigarettes together, puffing as he settles into Seunghyun’s side.

“What’s your name?” the boy asks. He trails his free hand across Seunghyun’s arm, tracing his thumb across the veins of his wrist and palm.

“Seunghyun.”

“I’m Jiyong. Spelled with ‘heart’ and ‘dragon.’”

“Cute.”

“I know,” Jiyong says. “I picked it myself.” The feeling of Jiyong’s fingers across the hairs of his arm leaves an itch, a tickling sensation. Seunghyun stubs out his cigarette and stands.

Jiyong breathes smoke out in two lazy spirals from the sides of his mouth, watching him from under dark lashes. “You’re not curious at all?”

“About what?”

Jiyong rolls over to follow his progress across the room. “You picked me up three times this week. Even though I told you I’m a clone. Most people ask.”

Seunghyun shrugs. But it is unusual, a clone by himself, dancing drunk in a dive bar in the shittiest part of Seoul — not at all like the tidy rows of factory workers in their pressed uniforms or the genetically engineered soldiers or the prancing pop stars that Korea so adores. “You said you were the only one.”

Jiyong hums, and his eyes flutter closed. “I am. I’m special.” He smiles a little.

Seunghyun had thought he was special too, once, but none of them are, not in Daldongnae. Working one shit job after another, scrabbling to scrape together enough money to get out, to get another gig, to get signed to a label, but after eight years, the specialness had vanished, and so did his friends -- all of them, even Daesung. Beaten down from better dreams, he turned into another shiftless resident stuck in the cycle of poverty, just like the rest of them. His mouth twists.

He looks up and sees Jiyong watching him, eyes flickering over his face. His long, skinny arm extends out to the table to extinguish his cigarette. "It's true," he says, his eyes never moving away. "I was going to be the best."

Seunghyun looks beyond the window. Jiyong's reflection is pale and blurred and his black hair fades away into the rest of Seoul, the rest of the endless night.

The air is clammy against his sweaty body and he shivers. He wants to leave, leave behind this boy and his chatter and his thin body that slides around him, presses against his back, reminding him of everything he failed at. Soft lips touch his shoulder, and against his will, he turns into the embrace.

Jiyong lays his cheek against the crook of Seunghyun's neck. “Will I see you again tonight?”

He thinks of the club, shaking with bodies and music and the thick air hazy with drugs. The way the nitrous clears his mind, how it makes him forget the friends that left him behind, how it softens the aching pulse of music inside him that he won’t ever write. He thinks of seeing this boy again, thin, with dark eyes, watching him from across the room, burning up with lust and sex and the desire to be the best, to be one of a kind. 

It's almost six, now, and if he doesn't get moving, the manager will cut his pay again. Outside, the noise of the city burbles on, the voices of the flickering billboards, the aircraft, the twenty million people all crammed together, lives bleeding into each other, color and darkness mixing in eternal night. The feel of a heart beating alongside his, in tempo with his own, the shift of smooth warm skin and the blood rushing within, he could drown in it. Wishes he could wash away, vanish in the city’s dark. Despite himself, he runs one hand through the boy's thick hair, lifting the soft, damp strands away from the back of his neck. The clock ticks on, its needle shuddering through air.

"Seunghyun?" the boy whispers against his skin. "Seunghyun?"


End file.
